Title: Planet Formation in Circumstellar Disks
Speaker: Ya-Wen Tang (ASIAA)
Date: December 6 at 14:30
Location: R521, General Building II
Abstract:
The formation process of exoplanets is one of the most challenging mystery of modern astronomy. Imaging of exoplanets is mostly obtained at optical and near infrared (NIR) toward disks where dense gas has been dissipated. To test if planets formed in situ or through migration, it is essential to observe young exoplanets which are embedded in their native proto-planetary disks. Surrounded by a large transition disk with a central dust cavity of radius of ~ 100 au, the AB Aurigae (hereafter AB Aur) disk likely harbors a nascent planetary system with two proto-planets based on several observations from the millimeter (mm) range to the IR. In this talk, I will present the new results reporting the properties of the large scale (a few hundred AU scale) spirals, which seem to create the shock regions on the dense disk at a radius of ~ 200 au. Two small scale spirals (~ 100 au scale) were reported within the dust cavity, and two putative planets have been suggested to produce these features. However, it remains inconclusive if the reported signatures at the putative planet locations indeed have planets. I will summarize the recent efforts in searching for such planets and the limitations of such kind of studies.
